Secular materialism

A Critique of Earthly Theory

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2390965
AutoresMitch Rose (0000-0002-0695-3633, University of Hull, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen16
Número2
Páginas107-129
Fecha de publicación2011-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183511401496
OpenAlexW2159670742
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas72

Over the last 20 years, studies of material culture have increasingly come to rely on the assumption that cultural and material forms are co-constitutive. Indeed, it is thought that the co-constitutive nature of culture and materiality guarantees the significance of materiality in the constitution of social relations. This article illustrates the limitations of the co-constitutive relation by characterizing it as overly secular. Specifically, it argues that the co-constitutive relation grounds the significance of material culture in a set of earthly dynamics that rob materiality of its privileged position. The article develops this position through two manoeuvres: (1) it describes a particular conception of absence as it is developed in current debates in continental theory; and (2) it demonstrates how a blindness to absence provides a limited understanding of the significance of material objects within social relations. In conclusion, the author argues that the recognition of absence re-orients the way we understand the significance of material objects by attuning us to how materiality marks that which is necessarily beyond the social

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Materialism · Materiality (auditing · Relation (database · Social science · Social theory · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy